Privacy and cookies

This covers the UK Shelf Sea Biogeomistry programme’s web site hosted at https://www.uk-ssb.org/. Links within our site to external web sites are not covered by this information. To find out more please follow these links

We are committed to protecting your privacy online and will treat any personal information that you provide to us, or that we obtain from you, in accordance with the provisions of the Data Protection Act of 1998. Any information obtained via this web site will be held by us. We will not provide it to third parties without your permission unless we are required, by law, to do so. Should you require further information or if you have any queries concerning our privacy policy please contact The BODC's Enquiries Officer.

Standard information collected

Within these processes we do not capture and store any personal information that can be used to identify an individual.

Information Method Purpose Details
Standard internet logs Server logs To enable us to trouble shoot problems The information collected includes the URL of requested resource; the timestamp of access; the client's IP address or hostname; their user agent (browser and version) information; search terms; other access fields for example, request success/failure codes, file size, compression.
User sessions Essential cookies To enable us to let you move around our website and use essential features like secure areas, shopping baskets and online data delivery Further details are provided under the essential cookies section below.
Anonymous details of visitor behaviour patterns Performance cookies To enable us to target development activities, to improve the speed and reliability of our services and enhance your experience Further details are provided under the performance cookies section below.
Anonymous details of user preferences Preference (or functionality) cookies To enable us to maintain your web site preferences Further details are provided under the preference (or functionality) cookies section below.

What use do we make of personal information?

We do not sell, trade, rent or give your information to other parties. Your contact information may be used by us, if you have agreed (on registration) that we can do so, to communicate with you in relation to our data, products and services.

How do we protect your personal information?

We take all reasonable precautions to protect personal information from loss, misuse or alteration. Only authorised BODC employees will have access to your personal information. You will be responsible for, and must take all due care to protect, any user ID or password that we have provided or may, in the future, provide for your use on our web site.

How can you amend your personal information, or ask us to remove it?

If you wish to amend or remove your personal information please contact the BODC's Enquiries Officer who will be happy to assist.

Cookies

What are cookies?

When web sites provide services, they want to make them easy, useful and reliable. Where services are delivered on the internet, this sometimes involves placing small amounts of information on your device, for example, computer or mobile phone. These include small files known as cookies. The cookies we set cannot be used to identify you personally.

These pieces of information are used to improve services for you through, for example

  1. enabling a service to recognise your device so you don't have to give the same information several times during one task
  2. recognising that you may already have given a username and password so you don't need to do it for every web page requested
  3. measuring how many people are using services, so they can be made easier to use and there's enough capacity to ensure a responsive and reliable service

More information on and how to manage cookies is provided in the Directgov article 'Browser cookies - what are they and how to manage them'.

Our use of cookies

Our cookies cannot be used to collect personally identifiable information about you. Please be aware that restricting cookies would impact on the services we provide to you.

Essential cookies

These first-party cookies let you move around our web site and use essential features such as secure areas, data baskets and online data delivery. These cookies do not gather any information about you that could be used for marketing or remembering where you have been on the internet.

Name Expiration Purpose
JESSIONID User logout or browser exit These are used to identify whether a user is logged into their account; to remember your selections and what has been entered into forms as you navigate to different pages in a single browser session; to allow (or restrict) access to secure areas as appropriate for user credentials; to maintain anonymous user basket data selections when you go to the checkout page; to allow you to return to collect data at your convenience
sessID User logout or browser exit
sessionid User logout or browser exit
userid Persists
https Persists

Performance cookies

We use Google Universal Analytics to monitor visitor behaviour patterns. Google Analytics uses first-party cookies as described below to track visitor interactions. First-party cookies are not shared by browsers across domains. For more information see an overview of Google's privacy policy. Non identifiable information is stored on Google's servers under the US-EU Safe Harbor privacy principle.

 Name   Expiration  Purpose
_ga 2 years

Google Analytics cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site. They consist of a randomly generated number. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, for example the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited. We use this information to target development activities to help us improve the site and to compile reports.
_gali Page exit

We also use Piwik Analytics for real-time monitoring of how the web site is performing. Piwik by default uses 1st party cookies. All information is stored safely internally on BODC servers.

 Name   Expiration  Purpose
_pk_id 2 years

Piwik analytics cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site in real-time. They consist of a randomly generated number. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, for example the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited. We use this information to maintain a reliable service and to help us improve the site and to compile reports.
_pk_sess 30 minutes
_pk_ref 6 months

Preference (or functionality) cookies

These cookies are used to provide services or to remember settings to improve your visit.

Name Expiration Purpose
__atrfs Page exit These are used to allow you to share pages with social network sites
__atsa 2 years
__atuvc 2 years

How to control cookies

If you wish you can control which cookies which are set by web sites through your browser settings. The 'Help' function within your browser should tell you how.

Alternatively, you may wish to visit AboutCookies.org which contains comprehensive information on how to allow, block, delete and manage cookies on a variety of browsers.

Within your browser you can also view the cookie code, simply click on a cookie to open it. You will see a short string of text and numbers. The numbers are the identification card, and can only be seen by the server that set the cookie.

For information on how to manage cookies on the browser of your mobile phone you will need to refer to the handset manual.